Afghanistan

Exclusive: Baby Lost in Chaos of Afghanistan Airlift Found, Returned to Family

During the tumultuous Afghan evacuation over the summer, Mirza Ali Ahmadi – the boy’s father who had worked as a security guard at the U.S. embassy – and his wife Suraya feared their son would get crushed in the crowd as they neared the airport gates en route to a flight to the United States.

byForeign Desk Staff

January 10, 2022

1 minute read

Hamid Safi, a 29-year-old taxi driver who had found baby Sohail Ahmadi in the airport, cries as he hands over Sohail to his grandfather Mohammad Qasem Razawi in Kabul, Afghanistan, January 8, 2022. Picture taken January 8, 2022. REUTERS/Ali Khara

Voice of America

An infant boy handed in desperation to a soldier across an airport wall in the chaos of the American evacuation of Afghanistan has been found and was reunited with his relatives in Kabul on Saturday.

The baby, Sohail Ahmadi, was just two months old when he went missing on Aug. 19 as thousands of people rushed to leave Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban.

Following an exclusive Reuters story published in November with his pictures, the baby was located in Kabul where a 29-year-old taxi driver named Hamid Safi had found him in the airport and took him home to raise as his own.

After more than seven weeks of negotiations and pleas, and ultimately a brief detention by Taliban police, Safi finally handed the child back to his jubilant grandfather and other relatives still in Kabul.